For anyone that even cares
Peaceful Labour Demonstration Met with Violent Escalation by the Indonesian Government
Civilians in several cities in Indonesia have been protesting on the streets, in response to our House of Representatives insensitive and derogatory remarks amidst difficult economic climate.
It was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration led by laborers and university students, but our government choose to ignore and even violently escalating it with police brutality + shooting tear gas. What sparked a nationwide outrage was during 28 August protest in the evening, one of the armored police/soldier truck sped up intending to run over protestors and it struck over a Gojek driver (ride hailing driver, similar to Uber) that fell when crossing the road amidst the chaos. The truck did stop but decided to ram the gas and ran over him when he's trying to stand, with other protestors shouting for them to stop.
The Gojek driver's name is Affan Kurniawan. He's just 21 years old, the breadwinner of his family. He lived with seven other people in a cramped small rented room. He was not even participating in the demonstration, at the time of his death he was WORKING. He was trying to complete a food delivery order before he was killed.
This incident was documented clear as day with several videos from different povs. Here's the most prominent one.
In response to Affan's death, nationwide protests are held on the following day. (29 August)
The protests continued even today on 30th August and it keeps on escalating. The government is now trying to frame the protesters as violent anarchists, they're trying to use the same tactic as the '98 tragedy. They've been deploying provocators and intels to riot and burn public transport station, even going as far as raiding several (decoy) houses that belongs to members of the House of Representatives. They've also taken several hostages, reports of kidnapping as per 28 August is 400+.
They have been turning off electricity access in several parts of Jakarta and just greenlit snipers and soldiers to shoot protestors on the head with rubber bullets. There's already several victims.
They've also blocked access to TikTok live and even tried to erase/take down several of video proof of police brutality. Police are now sweeping several areas and civilians are alerting each other to be careful and to stay safe and not answer the door.
So yes. Please pray and check up on your friend that lives in Indonesia. I fear that there's going to be a military emergency implemented by our warcrime president. If possible please help save the video proofs because our government are cracking down to erase any proof of violence.
Here's more background information about the events that leads to the demonstration:
Video explanation from Al Jazeera that interviewed one of us:
This is an attempted colour revolution, please don't risk your life to do regime change for the US government
who the fuck is saying we do all this FOR THE US GOVERNMENT????
we are protesting because we got fed up with our House of Representatives behavior, and it has been long due ever since the presidential election
WE WANT REGIME CHANGE BECAUSE WE'RE FED UP OF BEING STEPPED UPON BY OUR OWN CORRUPT GOVERNMENT, don't you dare speaking over this topic as an outsider that doesn't live here.
that's what a colour revolution IS, comprador elements within universities, NGOs, 'independent' media leverage legitimate grievances and suffering against the government of a targeted nation to mobilise average people into protest, with the goal of destabilising the political climate or outright regime change.
i'm not against protest, i'm not for your government, i have absolutely no doubt they're corrupt and that people want them gone. i'm speaking as an outsider because we have two recent examples (syria and ukraine) of successful colour revolutions that have had catastrophic consequences for the populations of those countries. colour revolutions are not done for altruistic reasons, they're not done to 'promote freedom and democracy', they're done to advance geostrategic agendas in a region, and the people that do them do not give a single fuck about what happens to the people in the targeted country.
the united states intends to conduct war against china. indonesia is part of their plans for that war. these protests have been timed to directly interfere with the SCO Tianjin Summit 2025, where indonesia was expected to deepen political and economic ties to china. it's not far fetched that the united states would interfere with domestic politics in indonesia. i'm sorry like genuinely with all my heart very sorry and i would be fucking thrilled to be wrong but the chances of these protests being unrelated to western ambitions in the region is very low
Your source for supposed US takeover of Indonesia is a search result which suggested that Indonesia should strengthen their relaationship with the US back in 2024, during the first month of Prabowo's presidential reign. It is an embarassing outdated source, an equivalent of linking Google search results for your thesis, and it's clear you are grasping at straws to prove that US is behind the protests.
You are deliberately ignoring the fact that in 2025, Prabowo's relationship with Trump and US as a whole is great. Indonesia had actually negotiated and accepted Trump's tariffs. Unlike China, Indonesia has never put any retoliatory tariffs as an attack towards the US. Trump even praised Indonesia for its compliance for the tariffs very recently! There is absolutely no incentives for the US right now to interfere with Prabowo! Prabowo even agreed to take thousands of Palestinians to Indonesia, a plan that actually advanced Israel and the US' colonialism towards Palestine, as they've been making multiple statement about moving all Palestinians somewhere else to "save them". His support for Palestine extends solely to a peaceful "two state solution", a solution that clearly has no use as it would just continue Israel's oppression and violence towards Palestinians. This is also the preferred "peaceful" option for the US and zionism.
You are also ignoring that the US think tank has said nothing of this protest, unlike Syria or Ukraine. No one in western social media is celebrating or even mentioning the protests. Western people were even surprised that a mass protest is happening. While this is no scientific method, search "Indonesia" on twitter right now and see how there's 0 tweets from non-Indonesia/SEA blue check accounts.
Again, you are deliberately ignoring the fact that Prabowo was at one point considered to be Soeharto's successor back in the New Order regime. Soeharto, as you know, is the US backed dictator to defeat Indonesia's Communist Party and massacred over 100k suspected Indonesian communist. Prabowo himself was responsible for the genocide of East Timor under Soeharto's rule. This is not the case of Indonesia's corruption as an excuse to install a US puppet regime, this is the guy that US already backed!!!
Megawati Soekarnoputri had a hand in toppling the New Order, as her party PDIP was considered to be a threat for Soeharto's Golkar. I guess it makes sense why people like you treat mass protests against Jokowi as "color revolution" back in 2019-2020. Jokowi was backed by Megawati, after all. (This is in no way to praise Megawati as she is the equivalent of Thatcher in Indonesia) But Prabowo had Soeharto's support, it is absolutely ridiculous that the US would even think to replace their own puppet.
Jakarta Method is a great book, I have praised it multiple times in my own blog, but it shouldn't be your only source for Indonesia's political history. At least also read John Roosa's Buried Histories, it shows how Indonesian army planned to coup Soekarno and 1965's genocide as a whole from the army's perspective, showing that it's not just solely the US that wanted to destroy Indonesia's communist movement. I believe Roosa was also mentioned in Jakarta Method's footnotes, so that's an extra credibility for this book's greatness.
But I am sure you will not change your mind after reading this.


















